Exclusive Video: Watch Tom Krell Perform 'Suicide Dream 1'

In the fall of 2010, Tom Krell released How To Dress Well's debut album Love Remains, a warped, dark look at the deep walls of depression–caused by a personal loss–sheathed in the singer's ghostly, beatific voice. The "denouement" of Love Remains, as Krell calls it, is "Suicide Dream 1," an arresting, open-ended artistic statement originally released on Love Remains with a newer version that he debuted on his orchestral EP, Just Once, in 2011.

He is currently preparing to return with his second full-length effort, Total Loss. Where Love Remains was meant to depict the way in which depression leaves one with "nothing more than a smothered cry," his newest release aims to go further. "I realized I wanted to figure out how to do meaningful mourning through my art," he explains.

ELLE.com spoke with Krell about the evolution of How To Dress Well, why he's tired of being compared to Frank Ocean, and how he views himself as an ever-evolving work of art. Below, watch an exclusive video of Krell performing "Suicide Dream 1" with orchestral backing at Vancouver's Waldorf Hotel.

ELLE: Did the critical praise heaped upon Love Remains affect the artistic approach for Total Loss?

Tom Krell: When I developed the ability and the habit to follow my instincts and really trust myself, I made Love Remains. I have to all the time remind myself: You love this. Follow that love, and just keep going with that love and trusting yourself. Hopefully you'll end up somewhere good. I'm so proud of Total Loss because it really is for me an emblem of the care I've been trying to take for myself and the trust I've been trying to have with my imagination.

ELLE: Was there an effort to evolve with Total Loss? It's certainly more piano and vocally-driven than Love Remains.

TK: I started to think about Total Loss, and it seemed like it was some kind of synthesis of a completely realistic and honest depiction of depression in Love Remains. This attempt to get a head above water moment out of this affects Just Once. The record to me is a synthesis of those two products. I do think of it as an evolution, but evolution isn't just from a lower to a more refined form. A life evolves along all different tangential lines and in very ambitious, maybe at first, opaque ways.

ELLE: You've been quoted as saying you want to make "alien" music, but "not alienate" listeners.

TK: I wanted to make songs of all different kinds, all of which are beautiful in their own specific ways. Some of which are quite sad and dark; some of which are quite happy and joyful even. This is why Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope became such an important record for me over the process of making Total Loss. Because it's such a varied record. She could have easily made an entire [album] of "Together Again"-style songs. Then "Together Again" wouldn't be this unbelievably wistful gem among these angry and frustrated songs. I saw her record as a beacon of self-care and self-trust. I tried to go my own path to my own Velvet Rope.

ELLE: Critics have perhaps unfairly lumped you in with contemporary R&B newcomers such as The Weeknd and Frank Ocean. Is this frustrating?

TK: Yeah, to a certain degree. [Frank Ocean's] Channel ORANGE is a very different record [than Total Loss]. It's this Stevie Wonder retro. You're talking about a completely different ballgame of our pure style and approaches. And I think it's a double disservice to us: me and to whatever R&B music critics group me in with, because you ignore all the details. And the details, at least for me, is where music becomes special.

ELLE: It's also been a hot topic that you are pursuing your Ph.D. in philosophy while maintaining this blossoming music career.

TK: I want to take myself up as a work of art in the sense that I want to make sure that the brush strokes of my life are contributing to something that I can look back on and say, "This was beautiful. This was full of meaning."

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